Sunday, May 30, 2004

You’ve all seen them. Someone does something comically over-the-top, then the voiceover announces ‘There is an easier way to wash your face/win a chocolate bar/commit suicide.’ Is there? Really? Wow, thank you Mr. Advert for pointing that out. I swear if all the ideas produced by the advertising industry were put together, there wouldn’t be enough originality to power a robotic cat.

Friday, May 28, 2004

A simply incredible piece of writing, possessed of devastatingly powerful insights into human nature, civilisation and morality; executed in prose that is thrilling in its grace and poetry. And two other stories, which are shit.

Monday, May 24, 2004

Now, the received wisdom among the liberal community of London is that Ronald McDonald is the Antichrist. Ronald is to the left-wing as East European migrants are to Daily Mail readers, polluting our country, destroying our society, and perving about with little kids. Well, even Daily Mail readers might draw the line with the kids reference. But, as a fully paid up member of the London liberati, I’ve got to admit my vice, publicly, here in front of you all, our dear readers. My name is Chris and I enjoy the taste of McFlurrys.

I know it’s wicked and wrong. Trust me, on the rare occasion that I do feel the urge, I flagellate myself for several hours afterwards, and whenever I pass over actual cash for one (Crunchie flavoured naturally), I don my hair shirt beforehand. But I simply can’t help myself. I would prefer it if a jingly-jangly ice cream van tootled past my office window every day and I could sate my cravings with a far superior Mr Whippy (with a flake and raspberry sauce, naturally). But in these days of lack of community and capitalist high street shopping, this simply is no longer the done thing. I need the vegetable fat creaminess of a Mr Whippy substitute and damn it all if under the Golden Arches isn’t the only place to find a quick fix.

Yet there is one thing that even in my more Whippy-crazed moments, when I’m actually convulsing through the cold turkey, that prevents me from buying a McFlurry. And that’s the smell inside of the McDonald’s. It’s like an aromatic slap in the face and a pungent “Pull Yourself Together Man and Look Around You.” As soon as I walk in the door I’m confronted by the rancid smell of indistinguishable meat frying in unmentionable fats, mingled with the overpowering sterility of bleach and cleaning products. My stomach churns and all thoughts of food products vanish from my previously befuddled mind.

In may ways, this should merit an appallingly low mark of, say, 0.4/10. However, for the sheer fact that this has probably saved me, oooooh, several pounds over the years and prevented a mid-20s coronary problem owing to the sheer amount of cholosterol clogging up my arteries, I am grateful. Not too grateful, mind.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

This is without a doubt the best Samurai/Horror/Yakuza/King-Fu/Zombie/Sci-Fi movie I have ever seen. And that includes Attack of the Zombie Gangster Samurais from Outer Space with Fists of Fury.Anyway, without giving too much of the plot away, largely because I didn’t understand most of it, I have made the following observations-

Japanese Gangsters are really gay. (Note to any Japanese gangsters, I am basing this entirely on the film, not personal opinion. Just relax, eh?)

This film seems to have quite improbably been the inspiration for both the policeman character in Catterick and Jonathon Ross’s dress sense.

Blair Witch Project would’ve been much better with zombies.

For a self confessed feminist, that guy sure seems to enjoy hitting chicks.

Fully 1/5th of the budget must have gone on fake blood.

Within the first two minutes of this film you know you’ve made the right choice, and from there onwards it’s a magnificently violent, slightly odd, chuckle inducing master piece.

After my recent tirade against women’s magazines, I feel I must redress the balance by saying that men’s magazines are shit as well. Especially this one. Shots of Izzy from Hollyoaks in a bikini does not make up for the pages and pages of artless writing and utter bilge. Still it was only 50p.

It’s very trendy these days to knock the logic of this song, pointing out that if the person’s great-great-great granddaughter was still alive and sexually attractive in the year 3000 his family must procreate on average every 200 years. However, what they’re forgetting is that if it’s possible for Busted to travel to the year 3000, by the great-great-great granddaughter’s time the time travel technology would if anything be more effective. Also, have these people never of cryogenics? Anyway, it’s a spunky power pop dystopian vision of a nightmare world that would have PG Wodehouse crying into his cornflakes if he were still alive to hear it.

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

I happened the other day to look at some statistics on who is using this site, and I was frightened to the very core of my soul. By way of explanation, allow me to share with you the top ten list of search terms that have led people to this our humble pages…

The first thing that shocked me upon seeing this list was the idea that there is someone else in the world besides James sad enough to know who the hell 'Greer Grant Nelson' is (don't ask, you don't want to know). However, this soon paled into nothingness besides the frankly horrifying realisation that there are people out there searching the internet for information pertaining to SPUGGY FROM BYKER GROVE. And… I'm reading between the lines here, and the thought is almost too awful to put into words, but… it can't be true, can it… in a…. sexual context? Gah! My whole body shuddered as I typed that sentence! What is wrong with you people? And why the HELL are you ending up at our site? I am stunned and more than a little depressed. Here we are, doing our best for you, trying to provide a public service in a way that is entertaining and informative, but is that enough for you people? No, you don't care about that, you want to read about Geoff from Byker Grove FUCKING SPUGGY. You sick freaks! You monsters! Is this what we have to do to get readers nowadays? Will we see a sudden spike in hits if I start talking about P.J. FISTING DUNCAN??!! I bet we will, too! Jesus Christ.

I thought this was the most disturbing concept my addled brain was capable of grasping; that the internet could be populated by creepy subnormals obsessed with the idea of underage ginger-headed bushpigs performing VILE SEX ACTS with fat moustachioed Geordies. But no, there was worse to come! What if the person hounding Google for such abberant information wasn't simply some spectacularly misguided pervert? What if it was someone with a more personal interest, someone trawling the internet for some evidence of their long-past, all-but-forgotten taste of glory? What if… it was Spuggy?

If you're out there and you're reading this, Spuggy… uh, please go away.

I liked this EP so much, I bought it on CD even though I already had it on tape! It’s one of the few songs that I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. Not that it’s very exciting, but I remember lying on the sofa thinking, ‘hmmm, that’s a nice tune.’ And thus began my love affair with Belle and Sebastian. Eventually I got a copy on a tape from my brother, complete with ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, though music piracy is wrong, and listened to it many times. Although I think B&S have released better songs since, back then my soul was not fully hardened, like a babies head, and those songs were able to worm their way in. When the Spanish style trumpets kick in I still get that warm joyous feeling.

And they had a work ethic too. Not for them an album track and two remixes, you get 4 all new songs on your EP (well, one was on their first album but noone had that so it didn’t really matter). And they’re all great. Not only is the title track probably my favourite B&S tune, but the second song, ‘String-Bean Jean’, is my second favourite. It also has the honour of being the only song I ever sampled in my 2 week Playstation based DJ career. Only it didn’t work very well. Great songs and a piece of my history. And I’m not a nancy boy.

That this place has the audacity to call itself the Drones beggars belief. There was no bread roll throwing, no Tuppy Glossop, just an average non-descript posh restaurant. But what really gets me is that I feel for it, like a rank amateur. They lured me in with a special voucher in the Evening Standard, only for me to find out it only saved £3 off the very limited ‘special’ menu. And due to this limited menu I ended up having Calves Liver, which Debbie says could only have been human liver at that size, which gave me food poisoning. Add in lack of no-smoking areas, bizarre bench-like side by side seating arrangements, no real atmosphere, immense drinks bill and the uneasiness about etiquette I always get at vaguely posh restaurants and it all adds up to a disappointing evening. PG Wodehouse would be crying into his monocle if he saw it. Poor PG.

About URT

In this ongoing project (estimated completion date – 2106) Government appointed arbiters of taste Neill and James Cameron, and their descendents, will review everything in the world, and give it a score out of ten.